Buddy was propped up on his bed with feather pillows behind and the family’s extra-best-for-company quilt spread over him. He had a plate of cookies on one side of him and a glass of sasparilla soda on the other. He looked, in fact, pretty damn chipper.
The truth was that he’d barely been scratched by a couple of the shotgun pellets, just enough to sting like hell and draw some blood, and now he was making the most of it. By tomorrow noon, Longarm figured, Buddy Fulton would be the number-one hero among the boys of Cargyle, Colorado. Why, any kid who actually got himself shot in a gunfight, and lived to tell about it, would be the awe and the envy of every other kid for miles and miles around. He’d have bragging rights for years to come. And with luck a scar or two to show off whenever the subject came up.
One pellet had sliced across the boy’s right cheek. Another had pinked his upper arm just below the shoulder. A couple more had ripped up his shirt some without doing any harm—although those had sure turned that shirt into a trophy to be fingered and passed around while all the boyish talk was taking place—and a final pellet had hit square in the side of the boy’s head just above his right ear. That one could have been deadly if the range had been just a little shorter, the powder charge just a little heavier, or the size of the pellet itself just a little larger. That one was the only piece of shot Longarm had been able to recover, but it was enough to show him that the shells in the shotgun had been filled with a load suitable for the hunting of ducks, not men.
Longarm judged the shot to be about a number-four size. Good for ducks or foxes but too light for geese … or humans. Birdshot fired from across the street like that Buddy would hardly have been bothered by. Buckshot striking him in the same places would have killed him. All in all the kid could count himself plenty lucky. This way he had all the bravado but damn little of the pain that could’ve come his way.
Longarm made sure Buddy was comfortable—comfortable? hell, he was in his glory—then insisted on helping Angela back into her bed.
Buddy’s mother, quite naturally, had been much more worried about her son than herself. Now, though, with Buddy safely cleaned up, bandaged, and put to bed, she was commencing to look used up. The excitement was too much for a woman with all the healing she still had to do.
“Come along now.”
“But …”
“No, I insist. Really. C’mon now.” Longarm took her by the elbow and tugged and prodded until he got her turned the right way, then poked and hauled on her again until she started moving. “I swear, woman, I’ve had less trouble herding ladrenes.”
“Ladrenes?”
“Cattle that’ve gone back to the brush an’ turned wild. Now quit hanging back on me an’ get yourself inta that bed before I … well, I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to. But I’ll think of something that you won’t like.”
“All right. I’ll be good.” She gave him an impish look—not so easy to do with a face that was mostly purple and black—and looked like she was about to say or do something to test his threat.
Just as quickly she became serious. “Mr. Long … I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for Eric. If it hadn’t been for you …”
“Angela—xcuse me, I mean Miz Fulton—the truth is, if it hadn’t been for me, there wouldn’t nothing have happened to Buddy. Whoever that was in the alley was shooting at me, not at your son.”
“I know that is true but … you’ve been so kind to both of us. So decent. I only wish there was something I could do to repay you for … everything.”
Lightly, and very gently, he touched her battered cheek and used the ball of his thumb to wipe away the drop of moisture that was beginning to collect and shimmer in the corner of her eye. “I’m the one owes you. Not the other way round.”
She shook her head right vigorously to deny that statement.
“Well, we ain’t gonna fight about it. Now you get back in that bed there. I’m gonna go out again, but I won’t be long.”
“Where?”
“Me an’ Buddy never got those dishes back to the cafe, for one thing,” he said with a smile. “I’ll gather those up, whatever’s left of ‘em, and take ‘em back. Though I don’t expect much. When that gun went off, me an’ Buddy wasn’t thinking about taking care of no dishes, let me tell you. I think the sound of breaking crockery was louder than the shooting for those first few seconds.” He chuckled and winked at her. “And I still gotta check an’ see if that saloon is closed up. That’s what I went out for to begin with, actually, but never got ‘er done. Figured while I was out too I oughta go up an’ tell Chief Bolt about the murder attempt in his town. Not that it’ll do any good, but this way everything will’ve been done by the book. There can’t be no comeback against me for not following the rules an’ keeping the local law informed of what I’m doing in their town.”
Angela nodded. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
He touched her cheek again. “I’ll be careful.” He didn’t mention that, if it was up to him, he’d as soon that son of a bitch in the shadows made another try. Particularly if he was going to use duckshot in the gun. Longarm would thoroughly approve of getting another crack at the guy.
He left Angela in her draped-off bedroom area, and gave Buddy a grin and a chuck under the chin, then let himself out into the night again. By the time his boot heel hit the plank that was laid at the front doorway for a stoop, Longarm’s expression was grim and his gun hand poised in readiness.
Chapter 27
There sure as hell wasn’t much worth taking back to the cafe where they’d made up the supper. He gathered up what he could, though, and returned it along with payment for the broken stuff.
He also borrowed a lantern from the man who ran the cafe and took another, better look in the alley where the guy with the shotgun had hidden.
Longarm found exactly what he expected to see there. Not a damn thing.
As he was walking back to the cafe to return the lantern, it occurred to him that the shotgunner couldn’t have been waiting there in ambush. Not deliberately, because Longarm himself hadn’t known he would pass that way. It wasn’t something he’d planned on ahead of time, just something that happened after supper. So the gunman must have seen him coming and taken advantage of an opportunity. The son of a bitch!
